Steve Cropper, Influential Stax Records and Blues Brothers Guitarist, Dies at 84

Early Life and First Success

Steve Cropper, the legendary guitarist who was a session musician with Stax Records in the ’60s, has died. He was 84. The Missouri-born guitarist played on dozens of hit records over the decades, including classic songs by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and the Blues Brothers. Cropper was also a member of Booker T. & the MG’s, the Memphis-based interracial group that served as Stax’s house band.

He was born on Oct. 21, 1941, in Dora, Missouri, and moved to Memphis with his family when he was 9. By the time he was 14, he had his first guitar. At 20, he scored his first hit single with his band the Mar-Keys, “Last Night,” marking the start of a long career that never slowed down.

Stax Records and House Band Work

Cropper became a part of the Stax Records family, serving as both an A&R representative for the label and a member of the Booker T. & the MG’s house band. They played on nearly every recording session during their peak years in the ’60s, backing artists such as Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd and Wilson Pickett.

As a session guitarist, Cropper helped create a sound that shaped soul music in the era. His playing style was simple and direct, lifting every song without getting in the way of the singer. For many artists who came through Stax, he was a key player both in the room and behind the scenes.

Songwriting and Later Work

In addition to playing guitar, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, cowriting classic songs like Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and Floyd’s “Knock on Wood.” Even after Cropper parted ways with Stax Records in 1970, he stayed busy and remained an in-demand session guitarist, recording with artists such as Jeff Beck, John Lennon and Rod Stewart.

In 1978, he joined the Blues Brothers band with former Stax bandmate Donald “Duck” Dunn. He received a shout-out of “Play it, Steve!” from John Belushi in “Soul Man,” echoing the same line used in Sam & Dave’s original 1967 recording of the song that precedes Cropper’s solo.

Honors and Reflections

Cropper was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 with his Booker T. & the MGs bandmates. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was nominated for seven Grammy Awards over the years, most recently for Best Contemporary Blues Album for 2021’s Fire It Up. Cropper’s most recent album, Friendlytown, was released in 2024.

In 2018, Cropper told UCR, “I look back on my own career, and I go, ‘I wrote that? I did that?’ I try to remember a lot of those times and the artists that I worked with. “We were very lucky,” he added about his time as a session guitarist with Booker T. & the MGs. “We just happened to be part of the times, and we were lucky to be there. It could have been somebody else, but it wasn’t; it was us. And we knew that.”